Month: March 2016

Keith & Kate recently completed their follow up to Grease Gaskets & Gears. You’ll recall that many members visited Les Lennon’s boot factory in Stoney Middleton and took photographs of this important mill – the last factory in the UK to be producing boots. The factory goes back to the late 1800s when Les’s grandfather opened the mill and started production.

K&K honed down their latest AV: ‘These boots…’ with Les narrating, and gave their premier of their latest AV. The venue was the YHA’s Losehill Hall, where 71 members and visitors enjoyed what was truly a feast for the eyes and music to the ears. MANY thanks to Alistair and Gillian for making this superb venue available for our fundraising AV Night. – where they and their team also provided tea and coffee. Net takings for this truly enjoyable event amounted to just of £300, which will be banked until we can accumulate sufficient funds to purchase a new projector for the club.

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Firstly, if you’ve forgotten that on Good Friday evening it’s our AV night at Losehill Hall. Look at the header on or website (above) to refresh your memory. Without doubt it’s going to be a great night, with an opportunity to see AV’s from some of the most talented photographers in our club: K & K, Steve, etc., etc. Contact Keith or me (Ian) to secure your places, as quite genuinely I’m nervous that the theatre at YHA’s Losehill Hall will be filled to capacity – or more!

Secondly, we are now members of North East Midland’s Photographic Federation (NEMPF). Along with third party insurance, we can draw upon a huge range and number of talented photographers. Kate & Keith are working hard to secure some of these talented photographers to present their work to us at club meeting later on in our continuing programme. The committee are also working hard to find some new and interesting places to visit for social/photographic days and evenings. So if you have any ideas please contact Kate.

Thirdly, our meeting in May will also include members handing in their three images. So start looking for your best images (mix and match to suit your best images) depicting ‘General’, ‘Streetscene’ themes & ‘Monochrome’. We’ll be announcing further details soon. Your competition images can be in portrait or landscape format, A3 or A4 . But no A3+ sizes this year please as Ray & his cohorts will be mounting these exhibition prints for later display on our newly bought display boards.

If you couldn’t attend the March meeting, you missed a visual feast and lots of information, as we had our Middle East expats Paul McGreavy and Wendy Butler who’ve returned hot foot from their time in Oman. Wendy spent the first half of the evening showing us how she combined her love of painting (using mixed media) with photography, using ‘Irfan View’.

I was really looking forward to this presentation, as when I was assembling images for Roger Moore and the 2014 YearBook and opened Wendy’s submission I was metaphorically speaking, blown away by the image Wendy had submitted. And now I know how Wendy turned her two different artistic talents into the image. Which led me to ask Wendy & Paul to visit us, so Christine & I could see more of her work. I can’t relate how Wendy used Irfan View, as I was too captivated to take notes. But three of Wendy’s images, incorporated into this post will speak louder than my words.

Then Paul, who admitted to being fascinated by desserts and the Middle East since he’d read Seven Pillars of Wisdom when he was a youngster, gave us his presentation. Some time ago Paul was given the opportunity to work in the Oman and Paul grasped this opportunity with both hands.

Paul’s talks about Oman, his travels around the country, and of course the people, held everyone’s attention. If you weren’t at the meeting you’ll just have to take my word – but you missed some great images and a fascinating talk.